Latest news – Page 652
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News
Raw deal for LDPs?
Having spoken to the SRA on behalf of a current non-lawyer manager (NLM) LDP, I was left bewildered as to why any legal disciplinary practice would wish to convert to ABS before the automatic passporting process (which will be delayed). When the plans for the introduction ...
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Sole Practitioners Group remains strongly opposed to ABSs
As chair of the Sole Practitioners Group, who provided material for the news item ‘Sole practitioner numbers rise’, I would like to make a number of points.
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Civil partners get the same divorce treatment as married couples, appeal judges rule
In a landmark financial judgment The Court of Appeal has confirmed that the courts will treat civil partners in the same way as married couples when their relationship ends. The court last week overturned a High Court decision that awarded west end actor Donald Gallagher nearly £1.7m following the break-up ...
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LSB spurns conveyancers’ litigation ambitions
The Legal Services Board (LSB) has refused the Council for Licensed Conveyancers’ application to regulate conveyancers conducting litigation and advocacy. The LSB said it had not granted the application 'on the grounds that the CLC lacks the legal power to make rules and regulations that ...
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Lit funder’s profits up
A leading US litigation funder has announced £10m profits ahead of its expansion into the UK market. In its financial results released this week, Burford Capital revealed it committed around £113m to 19 new investments during 2011. Since being launched in September 2009, the group has ...
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Custodial sentence for holiday juror
A juror who pretended to be ill to go on holiday has been jailed for 56 days. Janet Chapman had telephoned the court during a four-week trial to say she would miss two weeks because she was suffering from sciatica. But Chapman had phoned in the ...
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Secret trials: ‘explore alternatives'
Government proposals to extend the use of secret hearings in cases where evidence might compromise national security are a radical departure from the UK’s ‘traditions of open justice and fairness’, MPs and peers said today. In a critical report on the Justice and Security Green Paper, ...
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Workhouse legislation goes on bonfire of statutory dead wood
More than 800 pieces of ‘statutory dead wood’ from the 1600s and earlier would be scrapped under measures proposed today by the two bodies charged with tidying and modernising UK legislation. Laws identified for repeal include a 1696 act to fund the rebuilding of St Paul’s ...
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SRA to shut 15 ARP firms
A total of 15 firms will be closed down after failing to find an escape route from the assigned risks pool. The firms will be shut after failing to secure professional indemnity insurance on the open market by the 1 April deadline, the Solicitors Regulation Authority ...
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LeO unveils complaints publication policy
The Legal Ombudsman is to publish the total number of complaints processed against law firms – but not the details of what they have done wrong. The consumer watchdog starts collating complaints from today, ready to publish them for the first time in July. ...
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HSBC will not face competition probe over panel
The Office of Fair Trading has declined to investigate HSBC over the small size of its conveyancing panel, saying the arrangement does not have a ‘sufficiently negative impact on competition’. East Grinstead sole practitioner Elaine McGloin contacted the watchdog after HSBC announced its new panel in ...
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£1bn swaps claims going ahead despite settlements
The first wave of funded claims against banks by business owners who bought interest-rate hedging contracts are close to being ready, the Gazette can reveal. Norton Accord, the company that has secured the backing of funds to bring up to £1bn of claims, confirmed today that ...
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US extradition treaty ‘one-sided’, MPs report
The extradition treaty between the UK and the US is failing to protect the rights of British citizens, MPs claim today. A report by the House of Commons’ home affairs select committee says that the 2003 treaty makes it easier to extradite a British citizen ...
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SRA ponders £250m fine limit for firms
The Solicitors Regulation Authority is looking to close a loophole that restricts its fining powers for firms other than alternative business structures. The Legal Services Act 2007 allows the SRA to fine ABSs up to £250m, compared with a limit of £2,000 for traditional law firms. ...
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Committal fee challenge fails
The High Court has ruled that the government’s decision to scrap lawyers’ fees for committal proceedings was lawful. Dismissing the judicial review sought by the Law Society, Lord Justice Burnton cited the impact of legal aid fee cuts on lawyers. 'No one ...
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Don’t bank on loyalty
My firm, along with thousands of others, is no longer on the HSBC panel. As a result of the ludicrous volume of enquiries being raised by the bank’s preferred lawyers for this area in a case I am currently involved in, and because of the unrealistic and unworkable undertakings which ...
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No to HSBC
Having received the 13 pages of instructions from Countrywide Conveyancing Services in connection with a HSBC mortgage it is providing to my purchasing clients, it is obvious that this new procedure is doubling the work for conveyancing solicitors not on the HSBC panel while leaving all the liability and risk ...
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Something not right about guideline for either-way offences
Does anyone else smell a rat? A new allocation guideline for either-way offences was published earlier this month by the Sentencing Guidelines Council which comes into force on 11 June. Within the guideline it states: ‘It is important to ensure that all cases are tried at the appropriate level. In ...
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Carry on doctor
With reference to Jerry Pearlman’s letter of 8 March, the lady who first taught me German, on learning that I was a ‘rechtsanwalt’, insisted on calling me ‘Herr Doktor’ because she said that was how all lawyers are addressed in Germany and, as viewers of Inspector Montalbano will know, it ...
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Customer is wrong
I assume that if 120,000 solicitors told chief legal ombudsman Adam Sampson and the Law Society to strike out the use of the words ‘customers’ and, worse still, ‘consumers’ from usage, they will oblige? The use of the words customer and consumer is inaccurate in a professional context and ultimately ...